Drugs in the Hem
by MyFaceHurts
Summary: Humanstuck AU. The A.H. Home For Troubled Teens has been saving lives since its founding. But when a drug addicted fifteen year old finds herself locked behind its walls, she meets a host of characters who are... Interesting to say the very least. EridanXOC
1. Drugs in the Hem

Gale Fleming puckered her lips as she stared up at the concrete building above her. She blew a stern puff of air out from between her cheeks before inching forwards. The female poked a small hand inside the tattered bag hanging from her shoulder and tugged a large case into the daylight. She slid a pair of contact lenses over her dilated pupils, returning them to their natural size. A somewhat cocky grin spread over her cheeks despite the crippling fear that presided just beneath the surface. Gale moved forwards with ease, crossing over the concrete pathway and scurrying into the bushes where she pulled a cellphone out of her bag.

- fatalFracture [FF] began pestering cocaineRadiologist [CR] -

FF: im proud of you. you are a gentleman and a scholar my friend.

CR: Flattery won't work here, old man! IM STILL MAD.

FF: its for your own good. im saying this as your loving uncle rehab is just what you need.

CR: Maybe it's what you need you... FAT PERSON. But it isn't what I need!

FF: im not fat... i just have too much love for a normal size body...

FF: well look im not going to let you weasel out of this with petty insults. the a.h. home for troubled teens is where youre going. no more complaints. and no more speaking to me in such dude tones young lady.

CR: I didn't even want to talk to you today! You're the one who VIOLATED me with your stupid consistent pestering... Leave me alone stupid mean face old BAG!

FF: well. im appalled at you Gale. using such vile language in conversation im ashamed of you right now.

CR: Well... Good! IN FACT. I HOPE YOU EXPERIENCE A LONG STRING OF CONSISTENT UNFORTUNATE EVENTS YOU OBESE OLD CRONE.

FF: i think im going to leave before either of us say something we will really regret.

FF: good day to you.

CR: I HOPE YOU HAVE A TERRIBLE DAY.

- cocaineRadiologist [CR] stopped pestering fatalFracture [FF] -

FF: im still proud of you. though you may be no gentleman.

Gale wiped a small drop of liquid from the side of her eye. She blamed it on her contact lenses, nowhere near letting any of her 'I'm manlier than anyone' hubris slip away. The female wished she had smuggled more illegal substances with her into the rehabilitation center as she sniffed at the only remaining tablet of LSD in her purse. She placed it within her shirt after a moment of thought.

There would be multiple drug tests the moment she stepped within the walls of the rehabilitation center. Technically, it was called a home for troubled teens, but she knew the truth. Gale checked the hem of her new gray skirt, looking for any areas where someone might have been able to discover what was hidden within it. She didn't care very much for the uniform she'd been given. A white shirt with a pill on it to symbolize the section she had been assigned to. Drug addiction was her downfall.

Gale slithered over to the front entrance with a rather pouty look on her face. She paused as her hand hovered over the door handle. Now was the best time to get a feel for her surroundings, she figured, withdrawing slowly as she pivoted on her heels. Gale went clipping down a ramp and into what appeared to be the outskirts of a lush garden. The only things being grown in it were pumpkins, though, which seemed to be a little strange. A young woman in a pair of heavy overalls peeked up from behind a particularly large vegetable.

She wiped the sweat off her brow, leaving streaks of dirt in the presence of her hand, and tied her long black hair into a low ponytail. The female waved over to Gale, squinting a pair of glass covered green eyes in the harsh glow of the sun. Gale waved back and returned the smile. The two quickly continued going about their business. Gale passed the garden and managed upon a parking lot. What with it being the weekend and all, the spaces remained entirely deserted. That was, all except for one.

Gale crept over to the space rather fearfully. She wasn't quite sure what had happened and she wasn't quite sure that it actually had happened because she was still buzzing from quite the last hurrah before her entrance into the Hell-hole. She stooped down low over the incident, puckering her lips in thought. Gale decided it would best to lie down and mimic the actions of the creature she had stumbled upon, just in case he was dangerous.

"Do you want some help?" she inquired, raising an eyebrow.

"...Uhh... W-well... N-no I... I guess... I m-ean... N-not unless you w-wanna... Help... P-pl-please..." the creature appeared to be quite meek, actually. Gale wasn't sure whether it needed assistance or not, but she was no longer afraid of it so she returned to a sitting position.

"So... Yes?" she drew out the S as she spoke, raising both arms in confusion.

"... Pu-please..." the creature begged. Gale studied it for a moment before deciding to assist. It was a small child, below average height and rather thin, with its hair cut into a rather stylish mohawk. He wore a button up black shirt over a plain brown T-shirt with a frowning face on it. Gale was pretty sure that meant the emotional instability sector. It appeared that this young man, Gale had finally decided it was a male, had fallen out of his wheelchair rather tragically. She grabbed him by the waist and lifted him with surprising ease into his chair. He was light. Gale was legitimately concerned he might float away if she wasn't careful.

"Better?" she quirked her head to the side.

"T-thank you! ... Ah... S-sorry... Loud... Thank you v-very much." the young man looked up at Gale with idolizing brown eyes. She felt compelled to tousle his hair but thought she might actually scare him to death if she did that. He looked so fragile she didn't even want him to see the symbol on her shirt. Gale couldn't imagine the young boy to know what drugs were, let alone understand that she was addicted to them. Well, not all drugs. Only cocaine, Vicodin, OxyContin, LSD, PCP, amphetamines, ecstasy, magic mushrooms, heroin, compressed air, paint thinner, opium, barbiturates, and sometimes sharpies and papers fresh out of the printer.

_'But, you know, only sometimes.'_ Gale thought,

_'And always in moderation! Not gonna take too much of a good thing! Good thing... Great thing... The best thing... Best... Best, best, great, good, best... Best.'_

"Uh... R-really... Thank yo-you..." a timid voice called Gale back from her intense thoughts on the word best. She whipped her head back to face him and grinned.

"Much thanks! I mean... I mean welcome. Right! You are welcome, I'm glad I could help." Gale's eye twitched sharply. Something about withdrawals went flying through her mind, but she was so scattered she hardly noticed it. An awkward silence cluttered the air after that.

"What's your name?" Gale didn't much take to silence. She turned her amber eyes on the young man, smiling and beginning to lose control over her twitch.

"... O-oh... Uh... Me...? I... I'm T-Tavros... T-Tavros Nitram..." he smiled back at her nervously, avoiding eye contact as much as physically possible.

* * *

**_Hello mooncalves! This happens to be my very first story so don't shoot me in the face please! I've never really been on here before and I had this idea lying around from a while ago! Hopefully you mooncalves like it and leave me some reviews and stuff! Thanks for reading!_**

**_~MFH_**


	2. Roomies and Nautical Puns

"What's it like inside?" Gale inquired, wheeling Tavros through the garden as she spoke. Tavros pursed his lips nervously as if he didn't really want to say what was on his mind.

"... Uh... Well... I-I guess it's... P-pretty nice... There's... Uh... Food and... And water... A-and the kids are... Nice..." the young man tapped his fingertips together, a nervous habit he'd picked up during the second grade. He continued after a guilty moment,

"W-well... Uh... M-m-most the kids are... Um... Nice... I guess..."

"Most?" Gale proved her curiosity with an extremely overdone facial expression. Tavros was terrified of it.

"Some... Um... Uh... S-some of them are n-nice..." he admitted, rather shamefully. Tavros didn't like to think he was offending any of the kids who were less than kind to him. A lot of them had emotional issues they couldn't control and he didn't want to make them feel bad about something they didn't know how to fix. Tavros began tapping his knuckles together furiously. Gale noticed this, surprisingly enough, and decided it would be much better if she stopped questioning her frail new friend. She figured an honest compliment would do him some good. Gale inspected the child furiously, looking for something she really enjoyed about him.

"Well, for what it's worth, I really like your face!" she stated peppily.

"R-really?" Tavros smiled for the first time in days. He toyed with the buttons on his shirt as a slight blush sprang to his tan cheeks. Gale pushed the young man past a particularly enormous pumpkin. She stopped to stare at its glistening, orange rind. It was oddly hypnotizing, almost magical in a sense. Gale was entirely engorged by the gourd. One might even go as far as to say she was positively engourdged by it, pun fully intended and fully hilarious.

Nobody could tell how long she'd been staring at it, but after an immeasurable amount of time Tavros began snoring softly which seemed to pile drive the strung out female back into existence. She gathered her thoughts off the floor and brushed them back into something marginally presentable before picking up a jaunty pace with her small, mohawk-bearing friend. Tavros began to wonder if it was wise to put his life in this quite obviously incompetent girl's hands.

She did like his face, though, and she didn't seem like she was going to crack his skull open and suck his soul into a decorative pouch so he wasn't any more on edge than he normally was. He was a tad bit irritated that she had stopped and stared at a pumpkin for an hour when he had an important meeting to get to but he wouldn't dare say anything about his extremely mild upset to Gale. Tavros decided to formulate a plan to tell her that he was supposed to be somewhere in only a few moments. The thought of speaking alone was going to take the meager individual quite a long time.

Meanwhile, Miss Fleming was having a bit of an issue deciding whether or not to go inside the building. On one hand, she could get the help she needed and put her previously promising life back on track. But, on the other hand, cocaine. She knew that if she didn't amble into the so-called 'Home for Troubled Teens' her uncle would track her down and use all of his gentlemanly prowess to forcefully shove her through the school's unwelcoming doors.

Gale's uncle, whom she knew as Pap, really was a strange creature. He didn't allow her to use curse words or wish anyone ill, no matter how upset she was, yet he openly threw dangerous, medieval weapons into the room of a seriously drug addicted child and carefully explained to said seriously drug addicted child that violence was almost always the answer.

Thankfully, Gale hadn't taken to his teachings with much vigor so she remained generally corruption free. However, if the situation called for it, she knew exactly how to operate a gentleman's ranseur with intentions of producing deadly results. Gale then gave a quick moment of thought to what her dearest uncle might do to her if she tried to run away from the facility. She decided it would be far wiser to try and sneak drugs around the orderlies than face the wrath of a ridiculously violent gentleman. Gale ducked inside the cement walls of her new home as a pang of regret thrummed in her chest.

Things on the other side were surprisingly nice. Gale was taken aback by the quality of the facility. From outside it looked a little brutish but inside it was as sterile and white as the walls of a well-kept hospital. She huffed a pronounced sigh of relief into the air as her muscles quickly recovered from their once extremely tense state.

Her heart rate slowed considerably and her palms ceased their annoyingly heavy perspiration. She didn't know anyone else who sweat as much as she did when she got nervous. Or at least she didn't for the time being. That was all going to be changing pretty soon. But first came the matter of finding her room.

"Ah! I'm so excited to see you made of here alright!" a voice so sickeningly sweet Gale could already feel herself drifting into a sugar high burst through the corridor. Gale felt her hands slip off the handles of Tavros' wheelchair and she was intercepted by the warm hands of a young woman. The mortified junkey, entirely confused as to why a stranger was so happy to see her, froze in place as she was plucked from her spot at the building's entryway and shuttled over to a cream-colored reception desk.

The perky female brushed Gale off diligently before zipping behind the counter and freeing an expensive looking fountain pen from its holster. Gale took a few seconds to fully register what was standing in front of her. It was a teenage girl, apparently, and its smile was so bright that she was legitimately concerned that one might get turned into a decorative garden furnishing by staring directly at it.

But, after a few moments of staring, Gale had to admit that the woman was actually quite stunning. She had long, cascading hair that curled into cutesy ringlets around her blemish-free face and excited, grey eyes that would have lulled anyone into a strange sense of security. Her curvaceous figure was complimented by a loose, pink tank top and a long skirt made up of a thousand different swathes of neon fabric.

She had painted her fingernails all the different colors of the rainbow and a set of glow stick like bangles dangled from her wrists. But her smile took the cake. Every pearly, white tooth had been perfectly placed between two, well-shaped lips that had been stained the color of a perkily pink rose. Gale attempted to put a smile on her face as well but only succeeded in looking like a mutilated mountaineer lost in a snowstorm that'd had no choice but to resort to eating his three best friends and his dog, Poncho. The female behind the desk did her very best not to point this out. After all, the last thing she wanted was to be rude.

"Oh! Glub! I can't believe I forgot to introduce myshellf! I'm Ferferi Peixes, the head caretaker here at the A.H. Home for Troubled Teens, and I'm absolutely positively shore we'll be frond of each other in no time! Your name must be Gale, right?" Feferi chimed. Gale puckered her lips in confusion. She looked around, stared at the clock for a few seconds, and nodded in a very subdued manner. Gale had absolutely no idea what was going on. She peeked back to see that Tavros had gone missing, which made her extremely nervous. She turned back to Feferi and tried to decode the puzzle that was what had just been said.

"Well great! I have your room key right here and all your puffers hook perfectly in order! You'll be rooming with-"

"My puffers... What?" Gale's eye started twitching. The rather clever string of nautical puns Feferi was dishing out had given Gale a serious headache.

"Oh glub! I can get a little too carried away with my fish puns when I'm this excited! I meant to say that your papers look perfectly in order so you're all set to get settled!" Feferi explained cutely. Gale still had absolutely no idea what was being said. She found it appropriate to distract herself from the manic marine biologist by taking an extreme interest in the key she'd been given. Miss Peixes started up again in a matter of seconds.

"There's just one teeny tiny thing I need to explain before you get to unpack, okay? You'll be rooming with a really sweet little cuttlefish named Calliope! But it's very important that you know about her dissociative identity disorder you see..." every past that point was just a sludge of words that poured in one of Gale's ears and dripped into a messy puddle out the other. There were a few words she comprehended like "boy" and "actually" and maybe even something about being born but none of them mattered. Not when Gale had a totally sweet key to stare at.

'It... It's like I know it opens something. And wow is it shiny. I think an angel made it. His name was... Sebastian. Yeah, yeah let's go with that!' Gale smiled at the newfound key as she pictured a plump cherub forging it from heavenly metals. That thought alone was enough to keep herself occupied for a good twenty minutes as Feferi jabbered about something totally unrelated to their original subject. Gale didn't notice she was walking alongside Feferi until a half hour later.

"Go ahead and unlock the door-" a loud beeping finally caused a cease in the female's endless speech. She peered at her watch and brought a hand to her mouth,

"Oh no! I'm late! I'm so overglubbed I got to meet you Gale! I'll come back before lights out so I can say hi!" and with that Feferi trapped Gale in a hug so vigorous and sweet she couldn't breathe. The druggie's eyes started twitching in a mixture of confusion, terror, and the thought 'How did I even get here?' Feferi raced away so quickly she became nothing but a blue of colors and giggles. Gale let out a relieved sigh. She didn't know that she'd eve recover from how horrifying that event had been. Nonetheless, Gale retrieved the key from of pocket of her skirt. She placed a kiss on its gorgeous metallic surface before rubbing it against her face.

Her fingers worked carefully to plant the key in the hole and turn it the correct way, but Gale only succeeded in ramming her face into the oak barrier and tumbling to the ground. She supposed that was okay too. It certainly wasn't as good as getting inside the room but it was something. Not to mention, Gale really could have used the moment of solitude after that Feferi ordeal. She lied flat on the ground and plastered the same starving mountaineer smile on her face as she drifted in and out of reality.

It didn't seem as though this was going to be a very fun experience, but getting torn apart by a mace wouldn't have been any better. Gale let out a grumble as she pictured her uncle. She was still quite upset with him for sending her away. Deep inside, she knew that he was only doing what was best for her and that his insistence had sprouted from love. But no teenager wanted to admit their parent was correct so Gale vividly envisioned herself using a vice on the man who had raised her. All in all, it was a pretty great fantasy but it ended abruptly when someone slammed a door into her skull.

"Is some bitch out here or- OHFUCKITSADOORGOBLIN." a rather manly sounding voice for someone who was supposed to be a female penetrated Gale's ears. She popped up sharply, upon hearing the words door goblin. That sounded like a terrifying other worldly creature she did not wish to tangle with.

"Where?! It's not on me is it?" Gale jumped around and did a strange little dance. Once she was positive there weren't any door goblins trying to attack her she directed her attention towards the young man standing in the doorway. It was a relief for her eyes to land on something that wasn't horrifyingly colorful. Instead of an overly perky female, Gale was met with the sight of an eerily thin young man.

She blinked a few times just to be sure he wasn't actually just a talking skeleton. No, it seemed this boy was simply extremely skinny. His pale skin barely covered a pair of heavily blushed jutting cheekbones and two cherry red eyes. Gale swallowed heavily. He looked to be either upset or embarrassed; she couldn't quite pinpoint which one was more accurate.

Either way, he had chosen to cover the rest of his lanky body with a pair of dark green, corduroy jeans, a set of suspenders that perfectly matched the captivating red in his eyes, and a plain black tee-shirt on which a two small faces, one happy and one sad, had been scrawled. Gale wasn't quite sure what that symbol was supposed to mean. She figured she would figure it out later. For now, she was still encompassed by his eyes. They were such a vibrant shade she was having a hard time looking away. This meant she was unable to catch a glimpse of the mess of black hair that protruded from the boy's scalp.

The colors contrasted with the sickeningly dark bags that hung beneath his thick eyelashes rather beautifully. Gale was suddenly caught in a seriously brutal internal conflict. Which was prettier, the angelic key or this young man's eyes? Blood was spilt on both side but the angelic key arose as the victor. Gale knew she was going to have a hard time finding anything that dared to match the glistening beauty of her room key.

"I don't think there are any door goblins out here right, so it should be safe but I'm not gonna let my guard down just yet..." Gale paused and glanced around with shifty amber eyes before continuing,

"Nice to meet you goblin hunter, I'm Gale." she thrust her hand into the young man's chest in hopes that he'd accept her compliment and shake it. But something entirely different happened. His mouth hung open as an enormous rosebush of embarrassment gripped at his bony cheeks. He but his lip with a set of sharp teeth, one of which appeared to be missing, as he began scanning the hallways.

"Whoa! Whoa. Dude... F-fuck... Shaking hands in p-public? Damn that's some seriously depraved shit. O-oh Christ and saying it's nice to meet me! You must be some kind of skank trying to enjoy a complete stranger's company." he said, looking more flustered than anyone Gale had ever met. And he was only the beginning.

* * *

**_Hi again! So it seems like a few people like this story sorry it took so long to upload! Anyhow I hope you all enjoyed the first few character introductions and all! If any of you have any suggestions or anything don't be afraid to tell me! This is my first story after all so there's no way it's very good X3 Thanks so much for reading!_**

**_~MFH_**


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